Why is Black Unemployment So Much Higher Than White?

When the latest unemployment numbers came out, I noted that despite the overall unemployment numbers “remained flat…unemployment for women and African-Americans rose.”

Women’s rose to 7.8 percent, which is about the national average.

Unemployment in the black community rose to an unbelievable 14 percent.

That’s almost double the national average.

I was curious why, so I looked around to see if there was a solid reason why black unemployment was in double digits and rising. I found people blaming cuts in public sector jobs as a leading reason. According to a Harvard study, black folks are 30% more likely to work in the public sector and because over 600,000 public sector jobs have been eliminated, it’s hit the black community extra hard.

Again I found myself asking “why?” Why are members of the black community 30% more likely to work in the public sector?

MSNBC went as far as to say it was because black people didn’t have the ties to corporate America like us white folks.

Teenagers tend to be low-skilled. They lack the experience, knowledge and maturity of adults. That means they will be the primary victims of a minimum wage law. But why are black teens more heavily impacted than white teens? Black teens are far more likely to come from broken homes and attend some of the worst schools in the nation. Therefore, a law that discriminates against the employment of low-skilled workers will have a greater impact on black workers.

Higher broken home. Again, ask “why?”

Why are 70 percent of births in the black community to single mothers?

In 1960, only 28 percent of black females between the ages of 15 and 44 were never married. Today, it’s 56 percent. In 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was 19 percent, in 1960, 22 percent, and today, it’s 70 percent. Some argue that the state of the black family is the result of the legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty. That has to be nonsense. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families, comprised of two parents and children. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households had two parents. In fact, according to Herbert Gutman in “The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925,” “Five in six children under the age of 6 lived with both parents.” Therefore, if one argues that what we see today is a result of a legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty, what’s the explanation for stronger black families at a time much closer to slavery — a time of much greater discrimination and of much greater poverty? I think that a good part of the answer is there were no welfare and Great Society programs.

And why, as Williams suggested, are black teens far more likely to attend some of the worst schools in the nation?

Teacher’s unions.

The schools in the Washington, DC area spend $25,000 per student. For some perspective, the tuition for Sidwell Friends, where the President sends his children, is $32,000.

One way out is to send children to private and charter schools. It’s impossible for a poor black single mother to afford to send her children to private school without a voucher for the money that would be spent on them in the public school, so a voucher system was created, implemented and became a huge success.

In 2009, Senator Dick Durbin included a provision in an omnibus spending bill prohibiting any new children from receiving scholarships unless the program was fully reauthorized by Congress and authorized by the D.C. City Council. The make-up of Congress in 2009 was such that a reauthorization of the voucher program was highly unlikely, meaning Durbin’s provision effectively doomed the program, since no new children were allowed to receive scholarships.

NEA opposes any expansion or reauthorization of the DC voucher program.

Pretty cut and dry.

The National Education Association, or NEA, “the nation’s oldest—and largest—teachers union,” has donated over $14,000 to Sen. Durbin, and nearly $50,000 to the president.

While the parents of black children attending private schools were pleased to see their children getting a decent education, the Democrats were doing everything they could to send them back to the failed government school system they escaped because powerful teacher’s unions cut bigger checks.

Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner made sure the program remained active.

Sadly, black children across the country don’t have a voucher program like some of the DC children do, and it’s for the same reasons DC almost lost theirs.

Knowing this, it’s not a stretch to see the failed government school system many black children are trapped in as a contributor to high unemployment in the black community, especially when you consider this data from the Brookings Institute (pdf):

As of May 2012, the unemployment rate of workers with a high school diploma or less education is 9.9 percent, whereas the unemployment rate of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher is 3.9 percent. More educated adults are also much more likely to be in the labor force. The labor force participation rate for those with a high school diploma or less is just 55 percent, compared to 77 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree.

One explanation as to why less educated workers struggle to find work is that there just are not enough job openings available for them.

Poor schools, which Democrats fight to keep blacks in, and all the hardships associated with the lack of a nuclear family, which Democrat policies destroyed.

So getting back to the original question of why is black unemployment almost double the national average.

Democratic policies have had a compounding impact on the life of the black American, from birth until death. A majority are born to a family without a father because Democratic social engineering made it easy for them to walk away. And Democratic loyalties for children into prisons thinly disguised as schools because the unions want it that way.

Finally, with no stable family and no decent education, they don’t seek a secondary education in a job market that almost requires one, limiting their options to lower wage or public sector jobs.

The better question is, with decades of “help” from the Democrat Party, how could unemployment in the black community not be this bad?

Congratulations, Duane Lester for a very informative article. I remember the day, that Obama canceled the school vouchers for the children in DC, right after he registered both his daughters into a private school with arm guards.

OneAmericanAmongMany

Democrat policies have also made it more lucrative for low-skilled people of any race to stay on relief rather than improve their own lot through education or apprenticeship. I remember a conversation I had with a social worker living in West Virginia who said, “How can I convince people who have lived for generations on welfare to get jobs when they live better than I do?” How, indeed?

quasimodo

Teachers unions are almost irrelevant in the failure of schools. Teachers are almost irrelevant in the equation. Money is irrelevant. The most important things in the success or failure of schools is the home life of the students. Nothing else comes close and nothing can fix it if too many students come from dysfunctional homes. Five bad kids out of twenty can kill all achievement, and disrupt all education. Until the home life is fixed there is no hope

frylock243

But if you trap those kids whose parents (or parent) do care about their education into the same schools as the kids who disrupt all attempts to learn, and you compound the problem. Give those parents vouchers and let them send their kids off to schools where they at least have a chance to get their education. Give those schools the power to discipline children so the bad eggs can be weeded out to prevent a few from holding the many hostage. And stop the unions from blocking all attempts at reform.

http://www.facebook.com/anthony.soro.3 Anthony Soro

thats the problem you cant touch them, In my day you got your ass paddled

http://www.facebook.com/bud.jones3 Bud-Kathy Jones

or they got their sorry butts kicked out of school, then they hung around out side the school yard and eventually drifted away. Problem solved.

http://www.facebook.com/mdjohansen1 Mark Daniel Johansen

It’s funny how the teachers’ unions always insists that if the schools fail to teach a child … it’s the parents’ fault! But then their suggested solution is always more money, especially higher salaries for teachers and yet more bureaucrats. And why is it that, if parents are so crucial to a child’s education, that the teachers unions always fight tooth and nail against any parental involvement in the schools? (The superintendent of my kids’ schools once said that he was trying to encourage more parental involvement. I asked him just what he meant by this. Did he mean parents volunteering as playground monitors or helping out in the classroom? Or did he mean parents becoming involved in committees selecting curriculum and setting district policy? Oh no, he replied, what he meant was parents getting involved in levy campaigns, encouraging other parents to vote to give the schools more money.)

If teachers and money are irrelevant, then why don’t we cut the budget by 90%, and fire all the union teachers and replace them with people who will work for minimum wage? Hey, I bet we could get some of the parents to agree to teach for very little money — we’d only need about 1 parent for every 20 or 30 kids.

Funny, I don’t hear the teachers’ unions calling for that. But if teachers and money are irrelevant, then why don’t we just dump them and spend our time on something that matters?